Book 8
3.15
With regard to the amplificalion produced by reasoning, we must consider whether reasoning quite expresses my meaning. I am not a stickler for exact terminology, provided the sense is clear to any serious student. My motive in using this term was, however, this, that this form of amplification produces its effect at a point other than that where it is actually introduced. One thing is magnified in order to effect a corresponding augmentation elsewhere, and it is by reasoning that our hearers are then led on from the first point to the second which we desire to emplasise.
3.16
Cicero, when he is about to reproach Antony with his drunkenness and vomiting, says, Cat. i. i. 3. Phil. ii. xxv. 63. You with such a throat, such flanks, such burly strength in every limb of your prize-fighter's body, etc. What have his throat and flanks to do with his drunkenness? The reference is far from pointless: for by looking at them we are enabled to estimate the quantity of the wine which he drank at Hippias' wedding, and was unable to carry or digest in spite of the fact that his bodily strength was worthy of a prizefighter. Accordingly if, in such a case, one thing is inferred from another, the term reasoning is neither improper nor extraordinary, since it has been applied on similar grounds to one of the bases. See III. vi. 43 sqq. VII. v. 2. So, again,
